


How To Be Remembered

by octoberfeeling



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: CDTH spoilers, Friendship Origins, Gen, POV Multiple, also i guess there's a little cdth spoiler at the end so, area teen dead but finally finding purpose, barrington whelk is mentioned but we hate him, ghost boy is so soft, give noah more hugs and kisses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 02:00:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20145712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/octoberfeeling/pseuds/octoberfeeling
Summary: It had been seven years since 17-year-old Noah Czerny and 10-year-old Richard Campbell Gansey III both died on the ley line. Seven years since one of them had been resurrected by magic and the other had begun the strange, ghostly second act of his existence. The day Gansey arrived in Henrietta, the ley line surged to instruct Noah to find him. He'd take any kind of break from his monotonous ghostly existence, but he could never have expected the love and joy that would come after he found Gansey.





	How To Be Remembered

**Author's Note:**

> alright y'all this was supposed to be a piece for one of the prompts for Gansey Week, but Noah really just took over and said "this is mine now deal with it" so I dealt with it and I'm sort of obsessed with the result. I'm still participating in Gansey Week though, so be on the lookout for that! if you haven't heard about Gansey Week, make sure you check out what it's all about (spoiler alert: it's all about Gansey) at ganseyweek.tumblr.com!

_ You will live because of Glendower. Someone else on the ley line is dying when they should not, and so you will live when you should not. _

It had been seven years since those words were first uttered, since 17-year-old Noah Czerny and 10-year-old Richard Campbell Gansey III both died on the ley line. Seven years since one of them had been resurrected by magic and the other had begun the strange, ghostly second act of his existence.

Noah remembered the day Gansey first arrived in Henrietta. It had started out as another aimless day of vaguely haunting the halls of Aglionby Academy. He didn’t know why he so often chose to return to his  _ high school _ , of all places, but it certainly was an easy place to haunt, what with its intimidating, old brick buildings and the sense that it had looked (and probably smelled) exactly the same for many, many years. He was just about to enter one of the dormitory buildings when suddenly the ley line surged, for the first time in years, and he felt more alive than he had since he was, well, alive.

_ Find him. _

The voices came from everywhere and nowhere, all at once. It had to be the line. He never understood much about it back when he had played along with Whelk’s obsession, but he knew enough to know that it had to be the ley line communicating with him now.

_ Find who?  _ he wondered.

He wasn’t expecting a response to this internal question, and he jumped an impossible distance into the air when the response came, strangely loud and clear:  _ Gansey! Gansey! The child who was spared! Find him! He is here! _

The child who was spared? He wasn’t sure what that meant, but he could work with a name. And he didn’t know why this was so important, but he hadn’t had a goal in seven years. So. He’d take anything at this point. Maybe this was the reason he was still existing in some form, maybe this Gansey person was his spooky unfinished ghost business keeping him tied to earth.

_ Where are you, Gansey? _ The ley line had said “here.” Did that mean here as in Henrietta, or here as in on campus, or something completely different? He had to start somewhere, so he decided to start with snooping through the student files in the school’s main office. Perhaps there would be some information on someone called Gansey there.

He didn’t have to look very hard when he reached the office, though, because the first thing he saw as he entered was the school’s president shaking the hand of a boy so golden he could have been the sun incarnate. The first thing he heard after noting the boy’s goldenness were the words, “Welcome to Aglionby, Mr. Gansey.”

He leapt into the air again, this time accidentally rattling the light fixture hanging from the ceiling. Gansey turned quickly, narrowing his eyes slightly at the swinging light, and Noah darted out of the open office doors as quickly and invisibly as he could manage. He wasn’t ready to actually show himself to Gansey yet, he wanted to profile him a little bit first, to figure out what the ley line had planned for him, why it wanted the threads of Gansey’s fate and his own to be intertwined.

And so, Noah began to watch Gansey. He watched him buy an entire building and begin to turn it into some version of a home. He watched him befriend a reckless, wicked-looking boy with a sharp sense of humor and an even sharper smile. He watched an angrier version of this same boy move into the factory building with Gansey, and he watched as they spent hours and hours together, not sleeping nearly as much as any living person should. Noah liked to spy on the conversations they shared during these dark hours. Gansey was obsessed with the ley line. He was obsessed with finding Glendower. He was like a sunnier and infinitely kinder version of Whelk. Ronan clearly believed in him and supported him in his quest. This, Noah knew, was why the line had told him to find Gansey. He was supposed to join the search. This had to be it.

Noah started to practice manifesting himself in front of the mirrors in the less-populated Aglionby bathrooms. It was draining work, but he knew he would have an easier time joining Gansey and Ronan if he could present himself as close to living as possible. So he practiced. For a few days, he worked at it until he could see himself clearly in the mirror, with as little smudgeness as possible. It was painful, the first few times he caught glimpses of his own reflection. He was very clearly stuck as a 17-year-old, and looking at himself made him remember flashes of how he  _ got  _ stuck that way. He didn’t like to think about it. He repressed. He repressed and practiced until he thought he could manage being visible to another person.

To test this theory, he sat at the back of a classroom and asked someone if they had an extra pencil. They gave him a bit of an odd look, like they couldn’t remember if he had ever been in the class with them before, but then they said, “Sure, dude,” and rummaged through their backpack for a moment before handing him a pencil that had clearly been chewed on. Noah set the pencil on the desk in front of him and promptly left the classroom.

It worked!

He had spent enough time practically haunting Gansey at this point that he knew his exact class schedule, so he started attending every class but Latin with him. At first, he just sat in the back, visible but not participating. Then he moved up a few rows so that he was one row back and two seats over from the center of the classroom where Gansey sat every day, and Ronan sat when he deigned to show up. One day in history, when he was feeling particularly confident, Noah raised his hand to provide the answer to a question about a place in Virginia that had a name related to Welsh legends. He knew this would catch Gansey’s attention. Sure enough, when he spoke, Gansey craned his neck and held eye contact with Noah just long enough to flash him the hint of a smile that meant he approved.

After class, Noah started the walk toward Gansey’s next class. Gansey half-jogged to catch up with him and said, “I don’t think we’ve met before. I’m Gansey. This,” he motioned behind him to where Ronan was in no rush to catch up with the two of them, “is Ronan.”

“Noah. I’m Noah.” He sounded full-on skittish. Even though he’d been following Gansey around for weeks now, he was still intimidated by his glowing presence so close up.

“It’s great to meet you.” Gansey said these words like he meant them. “What do you know about Welsh kings, Noah?”

***

Gansey decided that Noah’s presence in Monmouth Manufacturing had vastly improved his and Ronan’s lives. Two insomniacs made for good conversation sometimes, but more often than not, Gansey spent the long, dark hours of the night alone in his portion of the apartment while Ronan brooded with his headphones on. Nights had become a bleary-eyed blur of cereal boxes and glue since he decided to build a miniature version of Henrietta.

But  _ three  _ insomniacs turned out to be much better. Noah was quiet and sometimes he seemed like he was quite far away, but he, like Gansey, preferred to spend these late hours in the company of another person. He knew about Glendower, though he never really elaborated on how he came to be aware of the king’s existence. This was Gansey’s favorite topic of conversation, so they got along swimmingly.

In the few weeks that Noah had lived at Monmouth, Gansey discovered that the soft-looking, smudgy boy had a deep fondness for casual affection. Ronan was a bit standoffish with him, but as soon as Gansey confirmed that he was fine with it, Noah’s affectionate tendencies heightened immensely. Now, every morning when Gansey was preparing the day’s coffee, Noah would appear behind him, already dressed for school and somehow radiating cold off of him, and nuzzle his face into the crook of Gansey’s shoulder. This was his way of saying good morning. The first time it happened, Gansey had been surprised, but had almost instantaneously warmed to the physical contact, something he didn’t get a lot of, living with Ronan.

During the long nights, Noah helped with the mini Henrietta. He would sit cross-legged and slouchy next to Gansey, their knees in constant contact, and add glue to pieces for Gansey to stick onto whichever portion they decided to focus their energy on. Gansey found it calmed him to have another person touching him, keeping him physical company. It slowed his mind, sometimes just enough for him to make another attempt at sleeping. Usually, Noah would head back to his own room just as Gansey collapsed onto his messy bed in the center of the room. But sometimes neither of them had any energy left to walk more than the three feet that existed between mini Henrietta and Gansey’s bed. When this happened, they were both in a state of full sleep-drunkenness. This meant that freezing Noah was extra snuggly. Gansey didn’t mind, seeing as he usually overheated at night anyway.

This was where they were headed tonight, Gansey could tell.

“I think this should be the last addition for the night,” Gansey said through a yawn as he secured a cardboard roof on top of one of the buildings.

Noah simply nodded his response against Gansey’s shoulder, where his head had landed some time ago. After Gansey was sure the roof wouldn’t slide off, he slowly stood, then offered his hand to Noah and helped him up as well. They both stretched, Gansey folded his glasses and set them on the stack of books closest to his pillow, and then from their respective sides of the bed, they both flopped into the center of it.

Noah cuddled up close and murmured, “Thanks for letting me do this sometimes. It helps.”

Gansey wasn’t sure what it helped with, exactly, but still he understood. He responded, voice low, “Me too, Noah. You’re welcome to sleep here anytime.” He turned his head slightly and pressed his lips softly into Noah’s hairline. Noah hummed, and even warmed slightly, if only for a second.

Gansey was asleep seconds later.

***

Noah hadn’t expected to love Gansey so much.

He wasn’t sure what he had expected, but he guessed it was something closer to a business arrangement and not so much like a true friendship. He felt like he had found family with Gansey, and Ronan too. Being around them made Noah feel closer to alive. And he couldn’t be happier about it.

Late nights with the two of them, spent either in solemn quiet or boisterous exhausted laughter. Driving to school with them, even though he wouldn’t really go to classes, and to Nino’s (the only valid pizza place in town thank you very much) after school, even though he wouldn’t really eat. Nights spent snuggling Gansey. People to just  _ be _ with. All of these things made Noah feel like this strange existence was worth it.

There were times, though, during the few hours of the night when there was actual sleeping going on, when Noah was forced to remember the truth. While Gansey and Ronan slept for real, Noah would stop making so much of an effort to be visible. So technically, he was at least in some sort of resting state. But he could still think while he was invisible, and that was the most painful part of it all. 

During the seven years of monotony between his death and Gansey’s appearance, Noah had practically shut down all of his emotions and any sign of humanity left in him. He didn’t feel any pain, didn’t have to grieve, but he also felt no joy or love or any of the good things. Now that he had those things back, he was convinced that the good things were worth the pain of the bad. As long as he was capable of making the choice between feeling everything or being numb, he would choose feeling. It was too valuable, too human, too alive for him to let go again.

Feeling was a gift, and he was starting to realize that death had allowed him to tune into that gift, even more than he had in life. In the last seven years, Noah hadn’t interacted with anyone beyond lurking nearby or scaring them out of their socks on a whim, so there had been no opportunities to notice that he was suddenly keenly aware of other people’s emotions. But being around two people who felt  _ so much _ was a brand new experience. For example, if Gansey was stressed, Noah knew about it before he heard the Camaro roar into the parking lot outside Monmouth. He could feel Ronan’s little moments of happiness radiating from under his closed door at night and he wished he knew what brought them on. 

He had been fairly intuitive in life, but never to this extent. It felt like the power of the ley line was saying, “Sorry you’re dead, but here’s two new friends and empathic abilities. Do with that what you will.” 

And he planned to. It absolutely sucked that he hadn’t found these excellent friends until his afterlife, but he intended to do as much  _ living _ as he could, now. He would help Gansey find his king. He would figure out how to make Ronan happy and make sure he stayed that way, as often as possible. He would use these new empathic abilities to the benefit of the people he loved.

His biggest opportunity yet came one day when he had told Gansey and Ronan he didn’t feel well and would be staying home from school. He secretly haunted the backseat of the Pig while the boys drove to school - something he did when he didn’t have the energy to manifest but didn’t want to be alone - and they passed by a boy walking his bicycle up the last hill into town. The boy looked at once soft-edged and worn, and like he had been made up entirely of sharp angles. He had pretty features and freckles like stardust. Suddenly Noah felt a massive surge of warmth and yearning fill the car, and he realized it was coming in waves off of  _ Ronan. _

_ Please. _

That one word became Noah’s entire existence for one pure moment of  _ wanting _ , and he knew he had to do whatever he could to find that boy with the freckles for Ronan.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so so so much for reading! the only reason this got done in the first place was because of all the support from the Screaming About Dead Welsh Kings discord server so honestly creds to all of them for my life <3
> 
> kudos are deeply appreciated and comments make my heart sing!
> 
> find me on tumblr at octoberparrish.tumblr.com


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